50 Ways To Reach Your Reader #1 Introduction

REMINDER: Don't forget our Shindig later today (3pm EST): How to Choose A Self-Publishing Partner. Your questions about self-publishing services answered by Victoria Strauss and Ben Galley

The question we get asked most often by members is: How Can I Sell My Book?

We like to think of it as: How Can We Help Our Members To Reach Readers?

And we've been busy over the past months putting together a detailed set of answers to that question. Fifty, to be precise.

Our blog series, 50 Ways To Reach Your Reader, is the result (hum to the sound of the old Paul Simon tune).

REACHING YOUR READER (not anyone else's).

Which strategies you choose will be individual to you aims as a writer, primarily, and take in questions of your budget, your experience, your motivation in writing, and most of all what publishers like to call your ‘content' — a.k.a. your book.

The series will make many suggestions but the main point to keep in mind is that you can't do everything and you shouldn't even begin to try.  The members we see having most success go narrow and deep, not wide.

They tend to do three things.

1. They mostly listen. Too many beginner indies jump into conversation with others too fast. Use social media firstly as a listening tool

• Go to where your readers are online and listen into the conversations. What are their concerns? How can you meet them? How can your book and other writing help?
• Keep track of other books like yours that are experiencing success in the marketplace, and see how those authors and publishers are promoting their books.
• Monitor the keywords that pop up. Do a search to see which other blogs and reviewers feature these.

2. They go to where their readers are.  They either have, or they acquire, a clear sense of who reads their work and they find where they hangout online.

3. They commit time, 20 minutes or more a day, every day, to reaching out to readers from the same spirit of service that made them write their book.  Make own personal plan that will deeply connect you with them, based on your reasons for writing and the writing itself.

This is an ongoing plan that you add to, piece by piece.

The followers you gain and relationships you build, reader by reader, will make sustaining yourself as a writer – both creatively and financially – easier and easier as you go on.

We begin our series tomorrow with the biggie: Amazon.